What Does Leviticus 26:21 Mean?
And if you walk against me, and will not hear and respond to me; I will add seven times over strikes upon you, according to your shortcomings.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.THE KEY
The hinge is responsive hearing: the verse places multiplied blows after its refusal.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you with a severe conditional: if you walk contrary to God and refuse to hear and respond, God brings seven times more plagues upon you, according to your missing. The violence is stated plainly as punishment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that refusing God’s address is neutral: the verse declares an escalating consequence.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁמֹעַ
lishmoaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
shamaʿ: hear; in this appeal, hear and respond.
“hear and respond” in this verse is lishmoaʿ. English can make “hearken” sound like simply noticing a sound, but שמע joins hearing with response. Here, the refusal is a refusal of responsive hearing, and the sentence places multiplied blows after that rupture.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: hear, heed
שָׁמַע
This is the same verb root beneath “hearken”; hearing reaches toward response.
shemaʿ: hear!
שְׁמַע
The same root opens “Hear, O Israel” in Deuteronomy 6:4, where hearing is an address that calls for a response.
shemuʿah: report; what is heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names a message received by hearing, showing that the root holds both hearing and what is heard.
חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם
ḥaṭṭōʾtêkhem
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥāṭāʾ: miss, go wrong.
“shortcomings” in this verse is ḥaṭṭōʾtêkhem. The word rendered “sins” grows from a root of missing or going wrong, and the verse measures the blows according to these misses. That root deepens the wording without softening the punishment it describes.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: missing; sin
חֵטְא
This noun carries the same root into the condition named in the verse.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: missing; sin, and in ritual use, an offering for the missing
חַטָּאת
The same root can name both the missing and an offering associated with it, holding the failure and its ritual response in one word-family.
וְיָסַפְתִּי
wəyāsaptî
GROWS FROM
יסף
yāsap: add, increase, continue.
“add seven times over” in this verse is wəyāsaptî. The Hebrew verb says “I will add,” beneath the KJV’s “seven times more.” The increase is cumulative: the verse describes an addition of plagues, not an isolated event.
ALSO GROWS
yāsap: add, increase, continue
יָסַף
This verb is the root beneath the verse’s statement that the plagues increase.
Yōsēf: Joseph; “he adds”
יוֹסֵף
The name Joseph carries this same root in Genesis 30:24, where Rachel speaks of the LORD adding another son.
THE PATTERN
When a divine address is refused, scripture describes the chosen way as returning in consequences.
But it shall be, if you do not hear and respond to the voice of the LORD your God, to guard and to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.Therefore they eat from the fruit of their way, and they are filled with their own counsel.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
But they refused to bend the ear, and turned a shoulder aside, and made their ears heavy so they would not hear and respond.The final phrase uses שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear and respond), the same root behind “hearken” here. Zechariah makes refusal physical, shoulder turned and ears closed, so Leviticus’s condition is not merely failing to catch a sound, but refusing responsive hearing.
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